How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes • Hacker News Board

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#101

Post by etherael » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 9:30 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #27

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now, maybe you think "breaking in" to a poorly protected network should not be a crime. No one is saying that. If he was hit with trespassing then it would be a different story. He was political target hit with the worst laws they could find that remotely applied to his case. >The rhetoric around this unfortunate incident borders on intellectually dishonest. The only dishonesty I'm seeing is from the aspie "law and…

> No one is saying that. If he was hit with trespassing then it would be a different story. He was political target hit with the worst laws they could find that remotely applied to his case. He was hit with the hacking equivalent of trespassing. The point is that the fact that the network is unprotected or poorly protected doesn't make it any less "hacking" than the fact that property is unprotected or poorly protect…

Do you approve of all actions throughout history performed under color of law? Your constant refrain to "Yes, these aren't terribly good laws, but they are the laws and that's enough" are so utterly unconvincing in light of this that I find it difficult to imagine your answer to the preceding question could possibly be anything other than yes, but before we proceed down that path I just thought I'd verify that assumption with you.

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#102

Post by danielweber » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 3:12 PM UTC

ivany wrote: post #68

rayiner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is saying that. If he was hit with trespassing then it would be a different story. He was political target hit with the worst laws they could find that remotely applied to his case. He was hit with the hacking equivalent of trespassing. The point is that the fact that the network is unprotected or poorly protected doesn't make it any less "hacking" than the fact that property is unprotected or poorly protect…

that property is unprotected or poorly protected makes it less "trespassing." You know that booking someone for trespassing is pretty difficult, right? They have to be depriving you of the use of your property AND refuse to leave. So if I set up camp on your front lawn, and you ask me to leave, and I do, I was not trespassing. I don't think AS was depriving anyone of the use of their property here, was he? So the ana…

AS's actions caused MIT to lose access to JSTOR. And he kept on very actively circumventing measures to keep him off their network.

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#103

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 4:25 PM UTC

rprasad wrote: post #95

jacquesm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, it's Swartz, not 'Schartz' or 'Schwartz'. As for the rest of your uninformed writings I think that 'intellectually dishonest' nicely covers it. Please at least correct the name.

Rayiner's writings are some of the most informed writings on this topic that I've seen this week. They are all far more informed and intellectually honest than anything you've written.

Both you and Jacques would be happier if you avoided talking to each other for awhile. You have radically different perspectives and different investment in this particular tragedy and it's making your interactions go sideways.

It's good to have both of you on HN, so it seems pointless to cultivate a feud. A month from now, you both might find you enjoy having the other one around to engage with. Me and Jacques agree on approximately zero issues and I'm glad he's back.

Apropos nothing else, I agree that 'rayiner has been invaluable. The more people we have on HN that have taken crim law the better.

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#104

Post by michaelfeathers » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 4:26 PM UTC

csense wrote: post #84

michaelfeathers wrote: post #4

How can it be fixed?

Remove draconian sentences from copyright criminal law and computer hacking law. This is difficult because the copyright lobby has some of the finest politicians money can buy, and because both legislators and the general public don't understand computers and are firmly convinced that anyone who understands computers has godlike powers. Require federally funded research to be public domain. This might actually be pol…

I suspect that "computer hacking" law would have fewer special interests around it, and that was the the thing that he was charged with.

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#105

Post by wissler » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 4:41 PM UTC

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #89

wissler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? You can't claim certainty is per se evil without lapsing into hypocritical contradiction. Those who zealously preach anti-certainty are hypocrites, intrinsically.

OK, so relativism has self-referential problems. Fine. But what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

I was responding to the OP, he'll have to answer my "so", I have no idea what his point was.

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#106

Post by emkemp » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #51

emkemp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then he should have gone to trial.

Even a not-guilty plea would have left him ruined.

How so? What was preventing him from setting up a legal defense fund and accepting contributions?

Hell, what if the judge had thrown out the charges?

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#107

Post by wissler » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #90

wissler wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not with democracy, it's with the values of the populace. If you have a predominately good people, then many political systems can work; if you have a predominately duped and corrupt people, no system can work.

If you think that the problem with the U.S. is that everyone is hopelessly enamored with Rorty or other postmodernists, then, I think maybe you are out of touch with "reality" just a little bit. :) I don't think the NRA is going to start quoting Derrida any time soon.

No, I don't think that. If you think that I do based on so little evidence, then you're clearly out of touch with reality, a lot.

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#108

Post by smsm42 » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

Peaker wrote: post #70

smsm42 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The effect of this would be the government would be prosecuting either cheapest cases (read: defendants most likely to be intimidated, confused and railroaded with minimal effort, including weak, mentally unstable, drug addicts, etc.) or very high-profile cases on which careers are made. Other ones would be completely neglected due to high costs and low cost/benefit ratio, or delegated to the cheapest personnel gover…

It would just be a factor of two in costs. Surely you're exaggerating its effect. Additionally I would propose that in some random subset of accepted plea bargains, a trial is forced and if the plea is consistently unreasonably far from the plea, there should be some negative consequence for the prosecutor.

It's all about incentives and incentives not always work arithmetically. Also note, that symmetrical funding will mean costs inflation - if defendant gets a million, prosecutor probably would have to spend more on prosecution, since now he has to overcome a million-dollar lawyers. So those cases that get to trial would be much more than twice expensive as before - because while prosecutors have huge resources behind them, they rarely use all of them, unless the other side has equally huge resources. If you force resource match, every case would require all huge resources. And this means incentive to not let that happen would increase dramatically, because the difference is between quick case close in couple of days and prolonged attrition battle with complete involvement of all resources.

>>>> Additionally I would propose that in some random subset of accepted plea bargains, a trial is forced

So, let's say the defendant pleads out and the jury can not convict him because of whatever stupid thing. How it makes prosecutor necessarily bad? Remember in the recent case of Blagoyevich outright selling senate seat the jury could not convict him because one of the jurors thought it's just politics as usual and there's nothing criminal was going on? How something like that makes prosecutor bad? Juries are never certain. It would be hugely unfair and would definitely drive good ones from the job, because good people are usually sensitive to unfairness. Bad people would stay and manipulate the system so that their cases either don't get randomly selected somehow or get to a sympathetic judge, or some such.

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#109

Post by Peaker » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #108

Peaker wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would just be a factor of two in costs. Surely you're exaggerating its effect. Additionally I would propose that in some random subset of accepted plea bargains, a trial is forced and if the plea is consistently unreasonably far from the plea, there should be some negative consequence for the prosecutor.

It's all about incentives and incentives not always work arithmetically. Also note, that symmetrical funding will mean costs inflation - if defendant gets a million, prosecutor probably would have to spend more on prosecution, since now he has to overcome a million-dollar lawyers. So those cases that get to trial would be much more than twice expensive as before - because while prosecutors have huge resources behind…

> Also note, that symmetrical funding will mean costs inflation - if defendant gets a million, prosecutor probably would have to spend more on prosecution, since now he has to overcome a million-dollar lawyers.

I don't see how that makes sense.. If the prosecutor completely relies on having far more resources than the defendant, then surely the case is weak enough to lose?

It would definitely mean that prosecutors give up on more of their weaker cases.

> So, let's say the defendant pleads out and the jury can not convict him because of whatever stupid thing. How it makes prosecutor necessarily bad?

That's why I mentioned "consistently" bad...

Re: How and why the US Justice Department over-prosecutes

#110

Post by wissler » Mon, Jan 14, 2013, 6:43 PM UTC

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #88

wissler wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At root this is a philosophical problem. The professional philosophers have created a disarray in the field of values, claiming that they are subjective and arbitrary, and that's resulted in the inability of people to rally around common, objective values of right and wrong. And when you say something like this, you generally just get what these philosophers have said repeated back to you, and some weak-kneed alterna…

What are you talking about? I have training in philosophy but I have no idea what you're talking about; I'm not sure what professional philosophers have to do with this situation at all.

What an ironic question.

What do you think the rational purpose of philosophy is?